TheBellCurve

One Libertarian's observations on politics, life, and stuff.

Thursday, September 07, 2017

Shiftless....

The first car I ever drove legally was a
1965 Rambler American. My Dad bought it when my older brother Charles got his
driver’s license, and I shared it with him when I got mine. We also had to
share it with Mom when Dad was driving the station wagon, or with Dad when Mom
was driving the station wagon. Mom and Dad had 8 kids, so we were used to
sharing a lot of things, but when you’re 16, it’s tough to share a car with
anybody.

I don’t remember exactly how big the
engine was, but I do remember it was somewhere under 200 cubic inches. I got a
ticket for attempted speeding once, but as long as you came to a complete stop
when you were supposed to, we didn’t have too much trouble with the local
police.

It also had a 3-speed manual
transmission, with the shifter located on the steering column, as I believe God
intended. That’s where shifters were found for years for the most part, unless
you had a really fast car, or sometimes a truck. Then it was probably on the
console or the floor board. Even when you graduated to an automatic
transmission, the shift lever was usually still on the column, unless you had
bucket seats, which were cool if you were cruising around, but not so cool if
you wanted to drive with your arm around your girlfriend.

I’ve been driving legally for 49
years, and my truck’s shifter is still on the steering wheel column, across
from the turn signal lever. Sometime back they moved the dimmer switch off of
the floorboard and incorporated it with the turn signal lever. I handled that change
pretty well, and only got my foot tangled in the steering wheel a couple of
times before I adapted to the new location. I think most dimmer switches are in
the same place now, and all you have to figure out is whether you need to pull
it towards you or push it away from you to change from bright to dim.

Sometimes when we travel somewhere
with Mom and Dad nowadays, I drive their car. They have an automatic
transmission, but they have bucket seats with the shifter on the console. I
suspect if they would have had bucket seats years ago, they wouldn’t have had 8
kids and I wouldn’t have had to share so much. Anyway, whenever I drive their
car, I always reach for the lever on the steering wheel column and turn on the
windshield wipers before I get the car in reverse and back out of the garage.
I’m not sure Dad believes my explanation that I’m just checking to make sure
the wipers work just in case it starts raining, but so far he hasn’t challenged
me on it.

My wife traded cars a couple of
weeks ago, and as luck would have it, they moved the shifter again, and this
time it’s not even a lever. It’s a knob on the dashboard, and every time she
lets me drive I spend the first couple of minutes grabbing air where things
used to be, reaching for a key that doesn’t exist, turning on windshield wipers
that don’t need to be turned on, and dimming lights that don’t need to be
dimmed.

I read a story the other day about
somebody working on a car that drives itself.

Sunday, August 06, 2017

One plus one...

Every so often, on social media sites,
someone posts a mathematical problem similar to this:

1 + 4 = 5
2 + 5 = 12
3 + 6 = 21
8 + 11 = ?

Apparently the challenge is to figure out
how the answers were derived in the first three equations and then using the
same method to arrive at the answer for the fourth problem. Of course, 1 + 4 =
5, but to make 2 + 5 = 12, and 3 + 6 =21, you need to multiply the first two
numbers and then add the first number to that answer. That works for 1 + 4 = 5
too. And by extension and using the same logic, 8 + 11 = 96.

I
won’t argue that (2 x 5) +2 = 12, or that (3 x 6) +3 = 21, but 2 plus 5 always
has and always will equal 7, just like 3 plus 6 equals 9, and 8 plus 11 equals
19. There’s an old saying that two
wrongs don’t make a right, just like getting a couple of problems wrong doesn’t
change the answer of the next one.

Shortly
after our country was founded, the government started getting involved in areas
of our lives it shouldn’t be involved in. Article 1, Section 8, of the United
States Constitution lists the powers Congress and the federal government have
been given. There are about 30 specific duties along with a few amendments that
have been added over the years. They’re involved in a few more than that now.

The
intrusions were few and far between for the first 100 or so years, but shortly
after the beginning of the 20th century, every congress seemed
determined to outdo the last congress. From taxes to welfare to retirement funding,
every time the government gets involved, we can pretty well depend on the next
session getting even more involved.

A few years ago they got involved in our
health care. A few years later they got involved in our health insurance. A few
years after that they got even more involved in our health insurance. It’s
turned out to be a good deal for some people, and a not so good deal for other
people. When the Republicans took over from the Democrats they thought they
could improve it by tweaking some of the rules and regulations associated it.
They never considered that it was wrong for the government to get involved in
what should be our personal business to begin with, and simply changing some of
the details wouldn’t right that wrong.

Our government has
made a lot of mistakes over the years. Those mistakes can’t be used to justify
more mistakes.

Sunday, July 02, 2017

Sunday's chilled is full of woe....

I’m not a fan of warm beer. But then, I’m not
a fan of cold beer either. As a matter of fact, I haven’t had a drink for nigh
on 30 years. It’s not that I’m opposed to drinking beer. It just wasn’t working
out for me anymore so I gave it up. I have a lot of friends that like cold beer,
and a couple of acquaintances who like warm beer. I also have a few friends who
like cold beer a lot. They’re easy to spot on Saturday night.

So on a personal level, I’m not all that affected by Ricker’s
recent foray into the cold beer world so jealously guarded by the carry-out
liquor lobby here in Indiana. Likewise, on a personal level, I’m not overly
worried if I can’t buy carry-out beer on Sunday. I am, however, more than a
little concerned about how these rules and laws came to be.

When I was running for governor last year, I pointed out
anything legal on Saturday should also be legal on Sunday. A lot of people
agreed with that sentiment, although not enough to elect me.

But whether you like beer or not, and whether or not you
think government should dictate what temperature it should be sold at and on
what day and by whom, we should all agree that laws and lawmakers shouldn’t be
for sale. The liquor store lobby has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in
the last few years to make sure the law protects their businesses from
competition.

That shouldn’t be the purpose of our laws, and it shouldn’t
be the purpose of our lawmakers.

Friday, June 23, 2017

Naked to the world...

I’m not sure when your private parts cease being private. Until
I had a stroke about 8 months ago, I was a fairly modest guy. Except for my
mother, my wife, and a few close friends, not many people had seen me buck
naked. Outside of when I was in diapers, and that half-hearted streaking
incident when I was much younger, I had managed to keep my private parts mostly
private.

When the stroke hit, they stripped me of my clothes and cut
me out of my underwear, but I wasn’t really in any shape to be overly concerned
about it. By the time I got my wits about me, an untold number of nurses and
orderlies had hooked up wires and inserted tubes in places that weren’t, in my
opinion, made for wires and tubes. And while I remain extremely grateful for
the excellent care I received at both hospitals that worked on me, I was also
grateful when they told me I could put my pants back on, go home, and cover up
what needed to be covered up whenever I felt like it needed to be covered up.

I knew I would have to go back in for some maintenance. They
installed a sending unit in my chest, and cut my throat open to stick a wedge
in beside a paralyzed vocal cord. I figured I could at least keep my pants on
while they were working on my chest and throat, but it turns out I was wrong. No
matter what they were working on, I had to put all of my clothes in a bag and
put on a drafty and not very fashionable or flattering gown, a one-size-fits
all creation with some fabric in the front, but lacking in the back and bottom.

By the time they got around to going in after a kidney stone,
I was pretty well resigned to the notion that I had been exposed to just about
everybody in the healthcare field in Richmond and Indianapolis, and it was
getting to the point that it didn’t bother me much more than it seemed to
bother them. As I said earlier, I’m not sure when my private parts ceased being
private, but I figure that by my third trip to the operating room, most of the
mystery and all of my modesty was gone.

I know they were all doing their best to keep me alive and
mobile, so I didn’t complain too much about the over-exposure, but it did make
me think about the loss of privacy in other parts of our lives.

When our national and state legislatures met this year, they
decided to intrude a little further into private areas and private property. In
Washington, a bill was introduced requiring persons who hold currency in places
other than a registered bank, to report it to the IRS. Grandma’s secret butter
and egg money would no longer be Grandma’s secret.

In Indianapolis, a law was passed requiring anybody under 18
years old to wear a helmet while driving or riding an off-road vehicle. And
while it’s probably a good idea to wear a helmet when jumping over tree stumps,
it’s a little over the top if Grandpa wants to cruise around the yard with a couple of Grandkids for a
little Sunday afternoon relaxation. It falls in the “sometimes a good idea, but
never a good law” category, aside from the fact it applies to private property.

For years, I’ve been asking people to name 3 things the
government doesn’t tax or regulate. I’ve always hoped it would get to be a
little easier. Just between you and me, and the government, it just got worse.

Monday, May 29, 2017

A little more time....

I had to do a little work on the playground/tree house this weekend. I had planned on doing it before, because the timbers around it had rotted away over the years. It doesn't really seem like it's been there that long, but my oldest Granddaughters turned 11 this year and they weren't very big when we put the playground in, so it's been longer than I thought. And like I said, I'd planned on replacing them before they got in such a shape, but I just never seemed to find the time.

The playground was kind of a sandbox, except that we put pea fill in it so it wouldn't track in the house so bad, and so Dawson wouldn't throw it (accidentally, of course) in his sister's or cousins' eyes. When I put in the new timbers, I also added a real sand box with real sand. I never really liked the pea fill all that much, and I always thought someday I'd get them some real sand, But I just never got around to it, and now Maebry is probably the only one young enough to appreciate it very much.

I'd always planned on building a tree house when my children were younger, but all they ever had was a sandbox with a roof over it, and we put a floor under the roof so they could have a clubhouse, but it was mostly a home for wasps and hornets, and they weren't too crazy about sharing it with the kids. I always thought I'd take some time and seal the bugs out, but before that happened the kids outgrew it, so it didn't matter anymore.

About 7 years ago the Grandkids and I built the tree house. We put a lot of thought and hours into it, and we built it right over the pretend sandbox. We started with one level, and then we added a second floor and a crow's nest with a telescope so you could see clear over to the neighbors if you took the notion.

Barkley has been keeping an eye on visitors and photographers for a long time.

We always planned on putting a 4th level on, but that's just another thing I never found the time to do. Most of my Grandchildren are too old or too far away to get much good out of another floor nowadays, so I'll probably just stick to replacing the timbers and sand as needed.

I think my kids probably had some fun in the clubhouse, and I think the Grandkids had some fun in the tree house, but I sure wish I would have taken more time when it mattered, and when my kids and Grandkids had a little more of it, and when I had more of it left. ﻿

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Peas and Carrots...

Forrest Gump
liked to say that he and Jenny Curran went together like peas and carrots.
While a couple of my Grandchildren might argue about how well peas and carrots
go together, or even how well they stand alone, I do appreciate Forrest’s
sentiments. Jenny didn’t always seem to share his views, though, and Forrest
spent a lot of time being disappointed whenever she moved off in a different direction.

I imagine we’ve all experienced some
type of disappointment in our lives. The first disappointment I remember was
when I was about four years old and our Cocker Spaniel, Cindy, became a
casualty under the front wheels of our John Deere tractor. The next 61 years
brought more frustration, but never anything I couldn’t eventually get over.

Being a Libertarian, I’m usually
disappointed after our nation has an election. I don’t think that is anything
new. As far back as I can remember, members of the old parties have felt
frustrated and upset when the party other than their own won. And most of the
time, most of them got over it.

I’m not convinced that is going to happen this
time around. While a lot of people were upset with Barak Obama, it seems more
people are more upset with Donald Trump. And the people who support Trump are
upset with the people who don’t. Some disagreements can get downright
dangerous. In Scranton Pennsylvania, the YMCA banned cable news programs from
its workout rooms because it was leading to fights between people of different
political persuasions.

It’s bad enough that Hillary Clinton
has offered to “come out of the woods” to reunite us. Anybody who believes that
Ms. Clinton can fix this obviously didn’t pay much attention to the last
election. And then again, maybe reuniting us isn’t something the government
should worry about.

Most of the disagreements people are
having with Donald Trump, or would have had with Hillary Clinton, are based on
the way government wants to use force to control us. Perhaps we need to let the
government worry about protecting us from force and fraud by others, and allow
all of these upset people to decide how they want to run their own lives.

I understand there are a lot of people who want the government
to handle their retirement. There are also a lot of people who don’t.But if we consider that there are more people
alive in the United States today who are in favor of that type of system than
the total population in 1935, it’s not such a stretch to believe that system
could survive on a voluntary basis.

And out of the 320 million people in the country today, it’s
not infeasible that part of them could join a national health care plan while
others abstained.And since we’ve seen
support for both choices from all ranges of the social and economic spectrums,
it might be easier than the politicians and lobbyists in Washington would have
us believe.

It wouldn’t take a lot of taxes for the government to provide
only essential and constitutional services for all, and then let people
voluntarily use and fund everything else as they choose.

That way whether we go
together like peas and carrots, or oil and water, at least we wouldn’t be so
disappointed and upset all the time.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Hope springs eternal.....

I don’t know when Grandpa Bowman’s
hair fell out. He was bald as long as I could remember, and even in his wedding
picture. When I became old enough to think about such things, and when somebody
told me that baldness is inherited from your Mother’s side of the family, I
realized that someday I might be follicly challenged myself. Grandpa had spent almost his entire life not
knowing where to stop washing his face. I hoped the same fate wouldn’t befall
me. And even though I hoped that it wouldn’t, I always expected that it would,
and it did.

I buy a couple of lottery tickets
almost every week, hoping they will draw my numbers on Saturday night, and I
will wake up a millionaire on Sunday morning. Truth be known, even though I
hope I will win, I don’t really expect it, and so I always keep my alternative
plan, which involves getting up and going to work in order to keep us fed,
clothed, and housed.

I imagine we all hope for some
things with a reasonable expectation that they will come true. If you have
children, you hope they will be successful and happy. We hope it doesn’t rain
everyday of our vacation, and we hope our plane lands safely. We hope we have
enough money to get through our retirement. With a little forethought and
planning, none of these hopes seem to be out of reach. Except for the plane.
Most of us don’t have any control over that. And the rain.

And we probably all hope for some
things we don’t really expect to happen, much like I hoped my hair wouldn’t
fall out, or like my hopes of winning the lottery.

The other day, I was chastised when
I admitted that I didn’t have much hope of anything good coming out of the new
administration in Washington. The only semi-reasonable expectation I have is
that perhaps the anti-war left will awaken from its 8 year slumber. I had a
brief but fleeting thought the left might come to a better and fonder understanding
of the Tenth Amendment in light of some of the new president’s executive orders,
but it passed quickly when I realized they probably realized they would be back
in power in a few years, and they wouldn’t want that hanging over their heads
when they were.

I know I could be an optimist and hope
our current administration would reduce the federal debt, champion individual
rights, bring our troops home, and reduce the role the federal government has
in our lives, but I don’t really have any expectation any of that will happen.
I’m convinced my hopes would be better spent on lottery tickets and hair
restorers.

Just like when we buy lottery
tickets, and hope doesn’t seem to be enough, we need an alternate plan when
Washington gets out of control, which over last few years, seems to be all of
the time.

In his book, The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress, Robert Heinlein wrote“I am
free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I
am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate
them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that
I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

We have
reached the point where can’t expect much out of Washington, and we need to
stop pinning our hopes on the federal government fixing anything. We need to
take control of our lives, our hopes, and our expectations.

About Me

I'm the chairman of the Libertarian Party of Wayne County. I've been married for 40 years to the only elected Libertarian judge in Indiana. We are the parents of three grown children and the grandparents of five beautiful granddaughters and two grandsons.
I enjoy writing about some of my experiences, and I hope somebody enjoys reading it.